Abstract
Diagnosis and prediction of Alzheimer's disease (AD) are increasingly pressing in the early stage of the disease because the biomarker-targeted therapies may be most effective. Diagnosis of AD largely depends on the clinical symptoms of AD. Currently, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers and neuroimaging techniques are considered for clinical detection and diagnosis. However, these clinical diagnosis results could provide indications of the middle and/or late stages of AD rather than the early stage, and another limitation is the complexity attached to limited access, cost, and perceived invasiveness. Therefore, the prediction of AD still poses immense challenges, and the development of novel biomarkers is needed for early diagnosis and urgent intervention before the onset of obvious phenotypes of AD. Blood-based biomarkers may enable earlier diagnose and aid detection and prognosis for AD because various substances in the blood are vulnerable to AD pathophysiology. The application of a systematic biological paradigm based on high-throughput techniques has demonstrated accurate alterations of molecular levels during AD onset processes, such as protein levels and metabolite levels, which may facilitate the identification of AD at an early stage. Notably, proteomics and metabolomics have been used to identify candidate biomarkers in blood for AD diagnosis. This review summarizes data on potential blood-based biomarkers identified by proteomics and metabolomics that are closest to clinical implementation and discusses the current challenges and the future work of blood-based candidates to achieve the aim of early screening for AD. We also provide an overview of early diagnosis, drug target discovery and even promising therapeutic approaches for AD.